


Someone’s little sister

by softmoonlight



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Child Murder, Dark, Fucked Up, Gen, Jedi Temple Massacre, Minor Padmé Amidala/Anakin Skywalker, Movie: Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, Order 66, Planet Coruscant (Star Wars), Star Wars: The Clone Wars Season 7 Spoilers, The rating is for violence, Unreliable Narrator, Vaderkin, because duh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-20
Updated: 2020-08-20
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:07:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26013094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softmoonlight/pseuds/softmoonlight
Summary: There is a moment where he stays his hand and looks down at the teary face of the young Togruta girl, the last one standing among her classmates.
Relationships: Anakin Skywalker & Ahsoka Tano, Anakin Skywalker & Ashla (Star Wars), Ashla & Chian (Star Wars), Padmé Amidala/Anakin Skywalker | Darth Vader
Comments: 13
Kudos: 88





	Someone’s little sister

**Author's Note:**

> Further warnings: uhh. **Incredibly** graphic violence, possessive behavior, clones with activated chips mentioned once, murder - standard stuff for Order 66 basically, but detailed.
> 
> I watched _Attack of the Clones_ the other day and saw the little Togruta girl in the youngling class. Then, as you do, I spent a billion years researching Jedi youngling clans after that. Since it's Star Wars and you can make anything angsty in five seconds, I started thinking about how he could have (however momentarily) seen Ahsoka in her in the middle of the massacre.
> 
> Went with a different writing style this time because man is this dude is a _mess_.

Only one child remains.

Vader stalks forward, letting the emotions fuel his steps. The intoxicating thrall of the Dark Side drowns out everything else that used to hold him back.

He has killed so many already. This is easy.

Raising his lightsaber, he moves to strike the child down, just one more Jedi to be exterminated—

and _freezes_ when he realizes staring down at a tiny Togruta girl. Earlier, he hadn't processed what any of them looked like, only caring that they fell to his blade as fast as possible.

( _Another voice, years ago,_ " _You're stuck with me, Skyguy," said brightly, cheekily,_ ** _innocently_** _. Before it all went wrong, before they were all made old by war.)_

The nauseating churn of angerfearsadness _despair_ fueling him until now subsides slightly into a numb chill. Anakin's 'saber arm falls limply to his side, blade still lit but pointed at the floor. The screams and explosions and deaths all fade away, and he simply stands in front of her, horrified realization dawning.

( _He's been so caught up in everything that he didn't spare a thought for her.)_

With nowhere to hide, the girl shakes and cowers against the wall. Unable to face her death, she ducks her head doesn't look up, instead displaying two montrals and a small, bare head with patterns just barely beginning to show, the lack of an akul headpiece underscoring how _young_ she is. She hunches in on herself, arms crossed over her chest, lekku coiled beneath her chin, body shaking with silent sobs.

He can't stop staring. He can't _move_.

Her coloring is different, closer to Master Ti than to...to Ahsoka, but the stubby montrals and the round cheeks remind him of her when they first met. ( _Not now, because she's older and she left him and she's nearly grown and doesn't need him anymore._ ) She can't be more than ten standard.

_(Is this what she looked like as a youngling?)_

Anakin wonders, faintly, if the Force is torturing him. Why else would he be presented with a personification of all his failures when he's _so close_ to unlocking his full potential?

One of the other children had called her Ashla. Screamed her name in her last breath.

Even her _name_ is similar to Ahsoka.

_(Ahsoka, who he_ **_forgot_** _. How could he ever forget her? He'd been so excited to see her again. He'd even entered the biggest battle of the entire war with a stupid grin on his face at the thought of everyone **finally** being together again.)_

Around her lie the bodies of her classmates. The scent of burned flesh hangs pungently in the air, the wounds still cauterizing even after death.

She does not move her gaze from the nearest one, an orange Nikto boy splayed on his back, glassy eyes staring up at them sightlessly.

They had been holding hands.

Vader had ripped them apart with the Force and flung the boy into the wall, shattering his skull instantly. Her screams meant nothing to him.

Now, seeing her fixation on her dead friend, all he can think about is the last words of two of _his_ closest friends. People who were once his family.

"We'll have to catch up some other time," Ahsoka said. ( _Can't do that now, can **never** do that now, idiot—)_

"You are strong and wise, and I am proud of you," Obi-Wan had said. ( _Fool, Anakin is a fool, no one should be proud of him; he let a man tumble out the window to his death and he cannot ever go back, so he fills the halls with more and more blood and tells himself that this is the right thing to do—)_

On the floor of that office, Anakin decided. _For Padmé_. There was no one more important than her. Obi-Wan was a traitor who tried to make him betray his true master, and Ahsoka...she was no longer a Jedi. She would understand better than anyone that they required extermination.

"Do what must be done," Vader's master had said, and he has to abide by that now. ( _Can't go back, have to keep going or it will all be for nothing—)_

But the protocols, the orders...

And last he heard—and he had been checking frequently, even in the midst of all this turmoil—Ahsoka was still in hyperspace...

with _Maul_...

so _what if..._

No. She's no longer connected to any of this. She will be spared.

And yet, he wonders. She's aboard a ship full of clones, _right now_ —

( _He's_ _killed her, too. She's gone and there's no one left. No one but Padmé, his future child, and his new master.)_

It's simple, really, he realizes, giving into the fear as he remembers his dreams yet again. The image of his wife screaming in agony will be burned into his eyelids for the rest of his life. After what happened to his mother, he can't sit back and let this awful future come to pass.

It's another choice, just like he made in Sidious' office.

Padmé, or Ahsoka? Padmé, or Obi-Wan? Padmé, or this little girl? Padmé, or the entire galaxy?

He'll choose Padmé every time.

Let the rest of them _burn_.

No one, especially not a Jedi, will take her from him. Including this girl, who would grow up to be just as bad as the rest of them.

Without warning, Vader lunges forward with a snarl and cuts the blade effortlessly through the girl's stomach in a flash of blinding blue. The scream dies in her throat before it can truly begin, and her slight form collapses limply onto one of the other bodies.

But she's not dead. She blinks slowly at the ceiling, her breaths rattling.

His face twists—whether in disgust or dismay or anger or even sympathy, he doesn't know. He doesn't know anything about himself anymore.

Anakin Skywalker, prodigy, ruthless killer, _missed on accident_.

A tiny, trembling hand reaches out blindly, desperately, and manages to brush the Nikto boy's hand. When she grasps it with probably all the energy she has left, her shoulders relax slightly, as though relieved, but that possibly can't be the case because she has a lightsaber wound in her stomach and can barely move and the life force is draining out of her as blood would a more mortal wound. Who would be relieved about that?

She shuts her eyes forcefully, still refusing to look at him. Tears continue to stream down her face, but he can feel the fragile calm in which she's cocooned herself.

It's a temporary measure, meant to alleviate pain until someone can receive proper medical attention. Being performed by a youngling, it's so crude he can easily shatter it, but if he doesn't, it'll hold long enough for her to fade away still wrapped in its embrace.

He can still feel her emotions, bleeding pain and confusion and betrayal and fear so great it is petrifying, but there is also the calm. There is also acceptance.

_There is no death, there is the Force._ Communicated through the Force, it is said not so much in words as sensations and images, but Anakin still understands the significance. 

She knows she is going to die. In a split-second, she managed to prepare herself for it.

Vader sneers. How can she, a literal child, accept death better than he can? How can she just _sit there_ and not fight back at all?

He doesn't understand.

Anakin stands there, unblinking, as she draws in her last breaths on the floor, head pillowed on the right shoulder of the tiny blonde girl, left hand holding the boy's right, surrounded by death, surrounded by the only future she has.

It takes only a few more seconds. He's left alone in the room with his thoughts.

_(How could you?!)_

Somewhere out in space, Ahsoka is dying too. Because of him.

He can't afford to confirm it. He doesn't want to know.

And so Vader chooses again. Chooses to force every thought of her into a tiny box far back in his mind, right next to where he buried his mother. Chooses to ignore that she might die.

Chooses Padmé again.

The box slams shut with a reverberating finality that even Ahsoka closing his fingers around her padawan braid didn't have.

It's better this way.

The weaker part of him continues the endless shout _w_ _hat have I done what have I done what have I done what have I **done** what am I **doing**_ , but it's quieter now. With every death he inflicts it grows quieter, and he lets himself believe he made the right choice.

Lightsaber humming threateningly, he stalks out of the room. The clones will burn the bodies later. Right now he has a mission.

And then he will finally save Padmé. This is all for her.

Even if the price is losing everyone else.

**Author's Note:**

> ...so, yeah. That was a lot. I have nothing to say for myself except that my brain is evil and _would not_ let this go.
> 
> Honestly I don't think Vaderkin was lucid enough in the massacre to think about Ahsoka. She was probably a horrified afterthought sometime after Mustafar, but for dramatic purposes, he does think of her in this.
> 
> His mindset here is largely based around this quote: "There's always this good in you, at this point. The good part is saying, 'What am I doing?' And the bad part is saying, 'I'm doing this for Padme. I'm doing this for us, and it'll be better for the universe. It'll be better for everybody.' But there’s always this little part of you saying, 'What am I doing?’ That's your rationalization for everything you've done." –George Lucas to Hayden Christensen about Anakin, _Revenge of the Sith_
> 
> Edit: Also I forgot that akul tooth headpieces are only worn by people who have killed an akul by themselves, so Ashla shouldn't have one.


End file.
